The Course of Human Events
by craichead
Summary: Ok, so the title is a bit pretentious. But Kirsten and Sandy in the early '80s were very down-to-earth.
1. Default Chapter

Her second night at Berkeley, Kirsten Nichol sat in the living room of her new apartment with her new roommates and got stoned. Her friends back in Newport smoked up on occasion, so the basic activity was nothing new, but the surroundings were shabbier, the soundtrack was Elvis Costello instead of Steve Miller, and the kids here used the word "fuck" an awful lot. Kirsten got the feeling they were trying to impress each other, that they were a bunch of suburban kids playing tough for each other's benefit. Which was fine by her, because she was a suburban kid, and tough was not really what she was after.  
  
"Our generation is fucking lame, man," a guy called Ed slow-talked as the joint made its way around the room. "I mean, all the good stuff is over. Hippies were cool, but now they're just pathetic. Punk was cool, but New Wave is kind of lame. Disco was not cool, but at least it was fucking something. What do we have? The Preppy Handbook? There's no fucking rebellion any more."  
  
Kirsten giggled at that. She'd never had any time for punk: she couldn't go for all that bad grooming and self-indulgent anger. At any rate, she couldn't agree that the era of rebellion was over. Because if that were true, there would be no way to explain how, at the age of 18, Kirsten Nichol, lead deb of the Newport Beach Cotillion, president of the Harbor School class of 1982, homecoming queen, straight-A student and heir apparent to the Nichol fortune and empire, had managed to get herself disowned.  
  
It hadn't actually been getting caught having sex with Jimmy Cooper that did it. That had got the ball rolling, but her parents had been surprisingly mellow about the entire incident. She'd expected her father to be livid, and his anger was not to be trifled with. But after she and Jimmy got caught behind the bleachers at the football field during the Valentine's Day dance, Caleb Nichol had jumped to his daughter's defense. He actually told the dean that the Harbor School should worry a little bit more about the cheerleaders' cocaine habits and a bit less about hanky- panky during school dances. Her mother was embarrassed and disappointed, but if anything Caleb Nichol seemed amused. Sometimes Kirsten thought her father treated her like she was a boy, that she was a stand-in for the son her parents didn't have. He almost seemed more proud of her than ashamed of her unladylike conduct.  
  
Kirsten's father had offered to her to make it all go away: he could donate a new library, and the dean would pretend the whole thing never happened. But Kirsten refused. She'd broken a rule, and she'd take her punishment like anyone else. She spent her suspension curled up in her room with her calculus book, and she returned to school with her head high to whispers and stares, as if there was a neon "slut" sign hanging permanently over her head. And while she'd never been the bra-burning sort, she couldn't help but notice that Jimmy's social stock seemed to have risen while hers had taken a nose-dive. It rankled all the more that, although Jimmy was sympathetic in private, she was pretty sure he didn't go out of his way to defend her in front of his friends. Jimmy, she realized, was not really the kind of guy who went against the crowd. She thought she might love Jimmy, and she certainly liked being his girlfriend, but seeing his weakness made her chill to him just a little bit.  
  
So it wasn't the revelation that Kirsten was not pure as the driven snow that had set Caleb Nichol off, and it wasn't even her public disgrace. The thing that had done it was Harvard. The Ivy League had always been as much her father's dream as hers. Harvard had gone co-ed when she was 12, and ever since then her father had referred to her as "the first Ivy-bound Nichol." Caleb did not have an Ivy League degree. He didn't have any degree at all. He made it through eleventh grade before his father died, they lost the farm, and he had to get a job and support his mother and younger siblings. And no matter how successful he became, Kirsten knew his lack of formal education smarted. He brought up his humble origins all the time, used them as a weapon to suggest that people from more privileged backgrounds lacked his drive and killer instinct. But although he'd never admit it, Kirsten knew he was a little intimidated by people with fancy diplomas, that he worried they could see the ignorant hayseed lurking behind his polished exterior. Kirsten knew that every time a glowing profile in a business publication mentioned his lack of education, he felt a little diminished, a little humiliated. And she knew that a Harvard- educated daughter would salve that wound just a little bit. Kirsten was definitely Ivy material: she had the grades, she had the activities, she had the scores, she had a rich father with major donor potential. Only now she had a letter from the dean on its way to all of the colleges she'd applied to, explaining how she came to incur a two-week suspension.  
  
In the end, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Williams, Pomona and USC must have all agreed with her classmates that Kirsten Nichol was a slut, because only Berkeley, which clearly cared more about credentials than moral turpitude, offered Kirsten a place in the class of 1986. Her father got on the phone, offered some money, promised a building, and secured her a spot on the wait list at Harvard, with promises of special consideration when the final cut was made. But by then Kirsten had cast her lot with Berkeley.  
  
"I can't go to a school that you bought my way into," she tried to explain to her father. "It wouldn't feel like I earned it. It would feel like your achievement, not mine."  
  
"It would have been your achievement if you'd been able to keep your pants on, Kiki," her father had retorted dryly. "It's not my fault that I have to clean up your mess." And Kirsten, her pride injured, had sworn to herself that she would not be the kind of girl who allowed her daddy to clean up her messes.  
  
Kirsten sent back her acceptance to Berkeley and assumed her father would come around. But after Kirsten was admitted off the waitlist to Harvard, he was resolute. "You'll go to Harvard or you'll pay your own way," he said. "I'm damn well not going to spend my hard-earned money so you can fraternize with a bunch of hippies and pinkos."  
  
They spent the next few months in silent, barely-suppressed confrontation, both too proud to budge, neither willing to admit how much was really at stake. Until the week before classes started, Kirsten assumed her father was bluffing, but he wasn't, and she left for Berkeley with the contents of her personal bank account and a promise from her mother to send whatever she could siphon off from the household budget that Susan Nichol still kept out of habit. In-state tuition was low enough, but Kirsten would have to pay for room and board, and she wouldn't be eligible for financial aid until she'd been out of her parents' house for a year. Which is how the Princess of Newport Beach came to be sharing a fleabag apartment with three roommates rather than living in the dorms, and also how she found herself at the annual student job fair the next morning.  
  
Kirsten couldn't help but feel a little overwhelmed as she and a couple thousand of her classmates made their way around the mammoth Harmon Gym, picking up applications from cafeteria tables marked "library" or "food services." She must have looked a bit shell-shocked, too, because a girl with an asymmetrical haircut smiled at her and said, "if you think this is chaos, just wait for registration."  
  
"Crap," thought Kirsten. "I must just scream 'freshman.'" It was a little annoying: after spending 13 years thoroughly mastering the intricacies of the Harbor School and the attendant junior Newport social scene, she was going to have to start all over again. And as she scanned the gym, passing over thousands of anonymous faces, it hit her that if she was a little scared, she was also a little exhilarated. Nobody here knew her. Nobody knew that she was lead deb or the second richest kid in Orange County or the girl who got caught with Jimmy Cooper at a school dance. For the first time in her life, she had a chance to be something other than "Caleb Nichol's daughter." For the fist time, she'd sink or swim on her own. If she screwed up, it wouldn't be the talk of the school, because really, all these people had better stuff to talk and think about than the latest exploits of any given freshman. And if she swam, she'd never have to worry that it was just because someone was hoping her father would donate a gym. She wasn't sure she could make it on her own, but Kirsten Nichol was not the type to back down from a challenge. When he'd refused to pay for Berkeley, Caleb had offered her the dare of a lifetime. And she was going to show him that she could rise to the occasion.  
  
But first she had to get a job. All of the decent ones seemed to be reserved for students who qualified for work-study, and she wouldn't be eligible for that until she could get financial aid in a year. "Non-work- study" seemed to be a synonym for "terrible hours, awful working conditions, and minimum wage." But she picked up a bunch of applications, wrote down the particulars of each job in a notebook, and sat down on a bench to start filling out forms. She could feel herself deflate as she read through the details of each miserable job.  
  
"Is it even legal to ask someone to work eight hours without a lunch break?" she asked no one in particular.  
  
"I don't know. I don't start law school for a week," she heard someone say. "I'll be sure to tell you when I find out." She looked up to find out who was talking. He had some sort of East Coast accent that she couldn't place: it was like someone on a T.V. cop show. She hadn't realized that people actually talked like that. The accent belonged to a slightly unkempt guy with black hair that her dad would say needed to be cut, unfashionably baggy jeans and a Yankees t-shirt that looked like it had been through the wash a few too many times. He was old, she thought; you had to be at least 22 to be in law school. He was old enough so that, unlike Jimmy and his friends, he looked like a man, not a boy. And he had nice eyes underneath those thick black brows. She couldn't believe she was thinking that.  
  
"You know, you shouldn't apply for a job that doesn't give you a lunch break," he said. "There are thousands of jobs here. You don't have to work in a sweatshop."  
  
"All those jobs are for people with work-study," she sighed. "I think I might be stuck in a sweatshop." What a funny phrase, "sweatshop", she thought. It sounded like something from A.P. U.S. history. Did they even have sweatshops anymore?  
  
"Well, why didn't you apply for work study?" he asked, and she sensed that she was on dangerous ground here.  
  
"I don't really qualify," she said carefully. "My parents could pay for college. They're just. not. paying."  
  
The guy looked curious now. "Why not? They have religious objections to educating women or something?"  
  
What a weird idea, Kirsten thought. "No. They wanted me to go to Harvard."  
  
"And you didn't get in," he offered.  
  
"No, I did. I just. didn't want to go there."  
  
He shot her that curious look again. "Don't get me wrong: I got a fine education at CCNY," he said. "But I don't think I would have turned down Harvard."  
  
To change the subject, Kirsten asked "CCNY?"  
  
"City College of New York," he explained. "Its kind of like Berkeley, but in Harlem, and with open admissions." he smiled "I guess it's actually not very much like Berkeley."  
  
"Are you from New York?" Kirsten asked, finally placing the accent. "I've always wanted to go there." Kirsten had always wanted to go pretty much anywhere. Her father said he'd seen enough of the world in the navy to know that he never wanted to leave Southern California again. Once a year, Kirsten and her mother would go skiing in Vail, and he'd stay home and work. Kirsten loved skiing: she was proud of her graceful, athletic mother, and she adored the sensation she got flying down the slopes. But she dreamed of Paris and Budapest and Katmandu. Kirsten thought Newport was great, but she wanted to see what else was out there.  
  
"Born and bred in the Bronx," he said, "and lived there until exactly two weeks ago. You didn't think I picked up this accent in L.A., did you?"  
  
"No," she said, laughing. "I'm not very good at placing accents. People here don't really have them."  
  
"You come to my neighborhood and you'll be the one with an accent," he said, sounding like a tough in a gangster movie. Was he doing an impression, or did he just talk like that?  
  
She stared back down at her applications and winced. She didn't know what to put in the space for "work experience." She'd never actually had a job. Could she put down volunteer stuff and extracurricular activities? Or should she just leave the space blank?  
  
"Having trouble?" the guy asked.  
  
"Oh. No. It's just, do you know if work experience has to be paid work?"  
  
"What other kind of work is there?" he asked.  
  
"Well, like volunteering. Or organizing things."  
  
"What kind of things have you organized?" he asked. "You weren't the one behind that sit-in in the administration building last year, were you?"  
  
She laughed, despite herself. "Hardly. Things for school, I guess. I was in charge of our senior class gift. I was lead deb at my cotillion."  
  
Kirsten hadn't realized she had the power to inspire the kind of incredulity that was evident on the guy's face. "You were lead deb at your cotillion?" he asked, the laugh in his voice turning just a little bit mean. "Isn't that a little Age of Innocence or something?"  
  
She shot him a withering look. "So is that a yes, I can put it, or a no I can't?"  
  
"I wouldn't tell anyone that you had anything to do with a cotillion if I were you, but that's just me," he said. "You've really never had a job? What do you do with yourself over summer vacation if you don't have a job?"  
  
The truth was that you went to parties and took tennis lessons and basked in the sun and fooled around with Jimmy Cooper. But she couldn't exactly say that. So instead she glared at him again.  
  
"Hey, sorry. I think you should give up on this scene."  
  
Now she was really pissed. "Look, my father is not going to budge on this, and I have to support myself. So you might think I'm a stupid rich girl who doesn't need a job, but if I'm going to make the rent next month, I need to find something now."  
  
He looked amused. "I was just going to suggest that you'd do better looking off campus. Nobody should have to work eight hours without a lunch break. Not even rich girls."  
  
"Seriously?" she asked. "You think I should look off campus?" He might be a jerk, but she'd defer to his expertise, since he'd apparently been job-hunting before.  
  
"Yeah," he said. "Here you're at a disadvantage. Anywhere else, you're in the same boat as everyone else. Or everyone else who's never had a job."  
  
Kirsten felt a surge of relief as she folded the applications in half and looked around for a trash can. She tried to think of off-campus jobs she could do: she could work at a clothes store, she thought, or maybe a bookstore. She would find the Yellow Pages, write down all the book or clothing stores in a three-mile radius of her apartment, and systematically visit every one, asking if they had any jobs. Having a plan energized her. She gathered herself to leave.  
  
"Hey," the guy next to her said, and she thought she heard slight hesitation beneath his surface confidence. "A bunch of us are going out for drinks at Finnegan's tonight at about 8. It's kind of a dive, but the drinks are cold and the food's pretty good. I don't think they card. You should come. Find out how the other half lives."  
  
"I think I have plans tonight," she said, although she was pretty sure that her plans amounted to sitting around with her roommates and a joint. She tried not to sound like she was blowing him off: he was self- righteous and maybe an asshole, but he'd been helpful. "But thanks."  
  
"Ok," he said, sounding just a little disappointed. "Maybe I'll see you around. I'm Sandy Cohen, by the way."  
  
"Kirsten," she said by way of an introduction, thinking that if she didn't give him a last name, he couldn't look her up. 


	2. Chapter 2

It was early afternoon by the time Kirsten had made a list of stores and planned out a route. By the time she had reached her last stop, her feet ached, she was starving, and it was getting dark. She'd filled out a few applications, but most of the stores were either not hiring or put off by her lack of experience. She'd known that the country was in the middle of a recession, but it suddenly seemed much less abstract than it had when she heard about it on the news. The last store, Subaltern Books, didn't look promising. The shop was tiny, as she walked in she coughed from the dust, and a huge poster of Che Guevara hung over the cash register, glaring down at her like some sort of angry Communist guardian angel. The middle- aged guy at the counter laughed good-naturedly when she asked if they needed any help.  
  
"I wish I could," he said, "but this is a one-man operation." Kirsten thanked him and left, wondering wearily if she should have taken one of the dreary on-campus jobs after all.  
  
"Ok," Kirsten told herself, "time to pull yourself together. Get some food, calm down, and come up with another plan."  
  
It was beginning to rain, and Kirsten ducked into the door of the restaurant next to the bookstore. There was a menu in the window, and Kirsten thought that a hamburger and fries sounded like pretty much the best thing in the world right now. "Finnegan's," she thought, reading the name at the top of the menu. "I've heard of this place." And then it dawned on her that it was the place where the guy at the job fair had said his friends were having drinks. She looked at her watch: it was 8:10. "Fuck it," she thought. He didn't seem like an axe murderer. Jimmy wasn't the jealous type, and this could hardly qualify as a date. She was starving; burgers beckoned; and she could use a friendly face at the moment. She knew the last thing she should be doing was spending money on food before she even had a job, but a few bucks weren't going to matter, she thought.  
  
Finnegan's was in the basement of an apartment building, and Kirsten entered down a long stairway, past fliers advertising political rallies and a "Rock Against Reagan" concert. The restaurant decor was utilitarian at best: block tables with no tablecloths; a bar in the back; a couple of posters haphazardly tacked up on the walls. But it smelled enticingly of fried food, and Kirsten was cheered by the sound of laughter and raucous conversation. She looked around for Sandy Cohen and spotted him sitting with seven or eight guys at a big table near the bar. His companions were all older than Kirsten, and one look at their self-consciously grungy clothes made her realize that her neat Izod shirt and designer jeans were out of place here. She remembered Sandy's snide comment about cotillion, and she wondered whether this was a good idea. "They have french fries here," she reminded herself, and her empty stomach settled the question.  
  
"Kristen," Sandy said, sounding genuinely pleased, as she approached the table. "Glad you could make it! This is Kristen, everyone." Kirsten hated it when people got her name wrong, but the guys at the table were looking at her so skeptically that she was reluctant to reveal that she didn't really know Sandy. She had never felt so preppy in her life. It had never occurred to her that preppy might not be the best way to be.  
  
"I can't stay long," she said, giving herself an escape route, as Sandy pushed his chair over to make room for her, found a clean glass, and emptied an almost-finished pitcher into it. Kirsten pulled up a chair and gratefully took a swig of beer.  
  
"Looks like we need another one of these," he said, glancing over at the empty bar. "What do you think it takes to get a drink in this place? There's usually a bartender this time of night."  
  
The guys, as it turned out, were discussing politics, which was not Kirsten's favorite subject. Her parents were active Republicans, and she dutifully feigned enthusiasm, but she found the whole thing pretty boring. She had been pleased when Ronald Reagan himself had pronounced her "the kind of young person this country needs" at a fundraiser that her mother chaired, but it was more because of the way it had made her father beam than because she had any great investment in being a model Young Republican. She figured Reagan was doing a good enough job, and she would vote for him when the time came, but she couldn't see the fun in sitting around talking about it. And listening to the guys at the table, she was pretty sure they wouldn't be pleased with her opinions, vague as they were.  
  
Sandy Cohen changed the subject to an only slightly more welcome topic. "So how did the job hunting go?"  
  
Kirsten made a face, gulped her beer, and admitted the truth. "Not so well. Nobody's hiring. At least, nobody's hiring me." Sandy made encouraging noises about having better luck tomorrow as a gray-haired guy approached the table.  
  
"Sorry to make you wait," he said. "My bartender just quit and things are a bit crazy here tonight. You want another pitcher?" Sandy agreed, and the guy headed for the bar before Kirsten could order food. She got up to follow him and was hit with what she knew was a nutty idea.  
  
"You want something?" the guy asked.  
  
"A cheeseburger and fries, please," she replied, "and can I ask you a question?"  
  
"Fire away," he said, a note of wariness in his voice.  
  
"Are you hiring a new bartender? I want to apply."  
  
Now he looked really skeptical. "You ever worked in a bar before?" he asked.  
  
"No," Kirsten admitted, "but I make a great gin and tonic." And she did: all of her dad's friends said so.  
  
He allowed himself a smile. "We don't serve many of those here. Are you even 21?"  
  
"No," Kirsten sighed. "Ok, forget it. Sorry to bother you."  
  
"You got any restaurant experience at all?" he asked.  
  
What was this about? "No," she said, gathering up all the confidence that her Newport upbringing and beer on an empty stomach had instilled in her, "but I'm a fast learner. I work harder than anyone I know. I have never been late for anything in my life. And I would never quit a job without giving two weeks notice."  
  
He looked at her appraisingly. "Well, you can't bartend if you're underage," he said, "but I'm short a waitress. You can come in for the lunch shift tomorrow. If you don't make a mess of it, the job's yours."  
  
The rest of the evening was a warm, happy blur. The burger and fries, when they arrived, were perfect. Sandy and his friends turned out to be really funny when they weren't talking about the Sandinistas, and even a little bit when they were. Walking home with Sandy and some grad student named Mark, Kirsten thought triumphantly that she could do this, that she could make her own way and hold her own with grownups.  
  
She let herself into her apartment and found her roommate Leslie reading Mother Jones in the living room. Leslie was short and sturdy and a kept her long, naturally-blond hair pulled back in a haphazard ponytail. She rode her bike everywhere, stocked the fridge with organic yogurt and odd soy products that Kirsten had never heard of, and claimed to be "majoring in bio and minoring in weed." Kirsten had never met anyone like her, and she had liked her immediately. "You're back late," Leslie said. "How'd the job hunting go?"  
  
"Good," Kirsten said, suddenly aware that she'd had a lot to drink and hoping she wasn't slurring. "I got a job waiting tables at Finnegan's."  
  
"That place where all the lefties hang out?" she asked. "You're not gonna wear that headband when you work there, are you?"  
  
"Actually, can I get some advice about that?" Kirsten asked. Leslie's clothes wouldn't pass muster in Newport, but she looked a lot less out of place here than Kirsten did. "Can you help me figure out something to wear for my first day?"  
  
Leslie eventually decreed that Kirsten's one pair of non-designer jeans would do, but she'd have to borrow a t-shirt. "You're gonna need new clothes," she said. "I think we need to go shopping."  
  
"I don't think I can afford to go shopping for a while," Kirsten replied.  
  
"You can afford to do this kind of shopping. Wear this tomorrow, and the next day we're hitting the thrift stores." Leslie grinned. "I'm gonna have so much fun de-preppying you."  
  
Two days later, having picked up six shifts a week at the restaurant and procured a new wardrobe for less than she was used to spending on a single pair of shoes, Kirsten carefully folded up her Lily Pulitzer dresses, her polo shirts and denim skirts and pastel belts, and put them all in a big cardboard box, which she shoved under her bed. She carefully perused the course catalog and picked out five classes, four of which she was pretty sure her father would have forbidden her to take on the grounds that things like art and contemporary literature were fruity. And she resolved to call Jimmy. She felt bad about delivering the news over the phone, but she had no idea when she'd be ready to go back to Newport, and this couldn't wait.  
  
In the end, it was every bit as bad as she thought it would be. "You met another guy," Jimmy said, his voice thick with pain and defeat.  
  
"Jimmy, no, it's nothing like that," she protested. "I just need to be single right now. I need to figure out who I am when I'm not somebody's girlfriend."  
  
"I didn't realize that you weren't you when you were my girlfriend," he said, his voice choking. She willed him not to cry. She didn't think she could bear it if he cried.  
  
"Is this for good" he asked "or just until you figure things out?"  
  
"I don't know," Kirsten had answered honestly, and Jimmy had said he'd wait until she made up her mind. When she finally hung up, she couldn't decide whether she felt more guilty or relieved. 


	3. Chapter 3

Looking back, Kirsten would never be able to identify the exact moment when she started thinking of Sandy as something more than a friend. In later years she realized that he'd been interested in her from the very start, probably from that first conversation at the job fair in the gym. But he took things slowly, mindful, she thought, of the age difference between them and realizing that she needed to be sure she could make her way without someone older and more experienced to rely on. He would come by Finnegan's during the slow stretch in between the lunch and dinner rush, order a Coke, and regale her with funny, mock-outraged stories about his reactionary law school classmates or the stupidity of the athletes whom he tutored part-time for extra cash. It was Sandy's idea that Kirsten start studying with him in the law library, where it was quiet and there were few distractions. And over time, Sandy became a distraction: she would try to concentrate on her book and instead find herself thinking about how much she loved the way his emotions registered in his intense blue eyes or how endearing she found his boundless, geeky enthusiasms.  
  
In the end, Kirsten made the first move. It was the last day of freshman year, and Kirsten had dropped off her last paper on her way to work. Sandy and his law school buddies stopped in to celebrate finals being over, and after his friends left, he waited for Kirsten to come by the table and say hi.  
  
"So I guess that's the end of flirting in the library for a while," she said.  
  
"I guess so," Sandy replied, looking surprised. Neither of them had ever acknowledged that there was actual flirting going on.  
  
"I was thinking," she said "Do you think we might want to try getting past the flirting stage?"  
  
Sandy's face registered a mixture of shock and amusement and open desire. "I would like that. What exactly did you have in mind?" he asked.  
  
"I'm not sure," Kirsten replied, smiling. "I thought maybe we could go somewhere after my shift and discuss that further."  
  
Later that night, back at Kirsten's apartment, Sandy paused while undoing the buttons on her over-sized man's shirt, and gently asked "you've done this before, right?"  
  
Kirsten made affirmative noises and then whispered "sometime, later, not now, remind me to tell you the whole story about why I didn't go to Harvard."  
  
Sandy looked momentarily perplexed. "I'm dyin' to know how that's not a non-sequitur," he said, before turning his attention to more pressing concerns.  
  
They spent a happy, busy summer stealing time to see each other. Kirsten got a part-time job at a craft gallery to supplement her waitressing income. Sandy put in far too many hours at the legal aid clinic, where the pay was miserable compared to his classmates' summer associate gigs at fancy San Francisco law firms, but where he finally got to do something he really believed in, make a difference in someone's life other than his own. Kirsten's boss at the gallery asked her if she'd try to do some light bookkeeping, and Kirsten proved to be a natural. Her boss, who was a brilliant wood-turner and significantly less-brilliant businesswoman, was only too happy to have someone else take over the books, and Kirsten gleefully threw herself into the world of budgets and numbers and dollars and cents. Years later, she would think of it as the summer when they became their grown-up selves, although she was certain that none of her colleagues or acquaintances would recognize elegant, accomplished Kirsten Cohen in that 19-year-old in torn jeans. In August, her financial aid came through and she was eligible for a work-study job, and while she took pleasure in the tangible evidence of her independence, she didn't need it. She gave notice at the restaurant and signed on full-time at the gallery.  
  
Several weeks later, during their weekly Sunday morning phone conversation, her mother broached the subject of Thanksgiving. "We'd all really love it if you would come," she said. "Hailey talks about you all the time. Your father misses you,"  
  
"But not enough to call and ask me himself," Kirsten pointed out.  
  
"He's exactly as stubborn as you are," Susan Nichol said. "One of you is going to have to swallow your pride, unless you plan never to see each other again. Will you at least think about it?"  
  
"I'll think about it," Kirsten said, playing with the loose threads on the green sofa that she and Leslie had rescued last May from someone's trash. She decided she'd think about it for a week before she told her mother that she couldn't afford the time off from work.  
  
After she hung up, Sandy, who spent most nights at Kirsten's but diplomatically made himself scarce during her Sunday phone calls home, brought her a cup of coffee and asked her, as he did every week, "so how's your mom?"  
  
"Fine," Kirsten replied. "Same as always. Singlehandedly running the tennis club, the parents' association at my sister's pre-school, and the boards of half the charities in Orange County." She sipped her coffee and told him "she wants me to come home for Thanksgiving."  
  
"And what did you say?" he asked.  
  
"I said I'd think about it, but I've thought about it, and I'm not going."  
  
Sandy seemed to consider for a moment, and then told her "I think you should go. You haven't seen your dad or sister in over a year. You've only got one family."  
  
"So do you, and you haven't been back to New York since you came here."  
  
Kirsten might have imagined it, but she thought she saw a flash of something, anger or hurt, in his eyes as he turned away and headed to the kitchen to pour himself more coffee.  
  
"Not the same thing," he said when he came back. "I'd have to fly home or take two weeks off of work to take the bus, and you know I don't have that kind of money. I'm sure you could bum a ride with someone who's driving to L.A. for Thanksgiving. I know your family makes you nuts, but you shouldn't just cut them out of your life."  
  
"I talk to my mom and Hailey," she protested. "It's not like we're not in touch. It was fine when my mom came to visit last winter. It's just that seeing my dad, in their house. it's like reverting to high school."  
  
"It's just a couple of days," Sandy reminded her. He hesitated before saying "I'll come along for moral support if you want. I won't let you revert. I bet you didn't know anyone like me in high school."  
  
Truth be told, Kirsten didn't need moral support, but she liked the idea of introducing Sandy to her parents. He was the least Newport person she knew. He was proof positive that she'd moved on from her narrow Orange County existence. He would announce to her parents that there was no way they were getting their perfect, preppy daughter back. Sandy's friend Mark was visiting his girlfriend at Irvine for the holiday, and he offered to give them a lift in exchange for gas money.  
  
"I'll come if I can bring my boyfriend," she told her mother.  
  
"That Sandy fellow is your boyfriend?" Susan asked, and Kirsten realized just how superficial their conversations must have been and how much about her life her mother didn't know. "Are you two serious?"  
  
"I guess maybe," Kirsten answered honestly, feeling guilty about keeping her mother in the dark. "I don't know.  
  
"Well, you must be pretty serious if you want to bring him with you the first time you come back in a year," her mother said, sounding none too pleased. But in the end she agreed, making it clear that Sandy would be sleeping in the guest room. 


	4. Chapter 4

From the moment they drove up her parents' driveway the night before Thanksgiving, Kirsten knew that bringing Sandy was a terrible idea. "Christ, Kirsten," Mark exclaimed. "This is your house? What exactly does your dad do for a living?"  
  
"He's a real estate developer," she said. "He builds houses and malls and stuff." For the first time in her life, Kirsten found that fact vaguely embarrassing. She wasn't ashamed that her parents were rich: they had worked hard for every cent they had. But she was ashamed of having taken her money for granted. Looking at the glass and chrome, all lit up against the night, Kirsten realized for the first time that the house was not just big but enormous. She'd always known that her home was larger than most of her friends', the location fancier, the view a little better. But she now realized that she'd had no idea how wealthy her parents were, that her idea of normal was all skewed. Her parents weren't just richer than ordinary folks; they were richer than rich people, too. She hadn't even realized that she'd only known rich people. Sandy and Mark looked awed.  
  
"I've never stayed in a house like this before," Sandy admitted after Mark drove off. "Actually, I've never stayed in a house, period. City kid," he shrugged, but Kirsten sensed that he was a bit taken aback. He joked about her being a rich girl, but it occurred to her that he'd assumed the Nichols were the kind of wealthy that allowed you to buy a Mercedes, not the kind where you could buy a plane or a yacht. Sandy was rarely intimidated, but he seemed a little overwhelmed.  
  
One look at her father, when he came out to meet them, told Kirsten that Caleb wouldn't be in any mood to make Sandy feel at home. He hugged Kirsten and asked her snidely if her shirt came from the Salvation Army, and she rolled her eyes, even though it was close enough to the truth. "This is Sandy Cohen, daddy," she said proudly, and her father eyed Sandy with overt contempt.  
  
"The boyfriend," he said, making no attempt to hide his distaste. Kirsten knew that her father loved her. He might want to control her; he might resent her attempts to be her own person; he might use his money to manipulate her; but he would always love her. But she suddenly realized he had no obligation to love her boyfriend. She'd wanted to parade Sandy in front of her parents because he was proof of her independence, because he was the last person in the world they would have chosen for their daughter. And her father was going to loathe him for exactly that reason. Sandy was the walking, talking embodiment of Kirsten's rebellion. She couldn't believe she was doing this. She loved Sandy, and she was about to subject him to worst her father had to offer. She wished she could send him back to Berkeley right now, but it was too late.  
  
Her mother's appearance bought her a brief reprieve. Susan Nichol showed Sandy to the guest room and suggested that Sandy, Kirsten and Caleb have a drink on the patio while she got Hailey to bed.  
  
"Can I see her first, mom?" Kirsten asked.  
  
"I think that might be a bit too much excitement right before bedtime," Mrs. Nichol said lightly, and Kirsten felt a stab of guilt. A year was forever to a four-year-old. Would Hailey even recognize her?  
  
Kirsten made her father one of her famous gin and tonics and poured Cokes for Sandy and herself. She briefly thought that alcohol would fortify them for the coming conversation, but ultimately decided they both needed to have their wits about them.  
  
"So Sandy," Caleb Nichol started, "Cohen's a Jewish name, isn't it?"  
  
"Yeah," Sandy said, surprised. "It means 'priest' in Hebrew, actually."  
  
"I've always admired the Jews," Caleb said, the slightest hint of malice in his voice. "Good with money, your people. Thrifty. I can tell you're the thrifty type: you didn't spend any more than you needed to on that shirt, did you? No wasting money to get Brooks Brothers."  
  
Kirsten saw Sandy redden slightly. She knew that the short-sleeved oxford shirt and chinos he was wearing were his best clothes, the ones he reserved for things like job interviews or when he needed to accompany one of the clients at the legal aid clinic to court. That morning he'd joked that he hoped her parents appreciated him wearing his fancy clothes for them. She knew that Sandy wasn't stingy; he was just broke. But she also suspected that he'd had no idea that his clothes looked cheap. And now he did. Her father, she thought, knew exactly what he was doing: only another upwardly-mobile poor kid could be so attuned to Sandy's vulnerabilities. She tried desperately to come up with some way to shut him up, but everything should could think to say would just add to Sandy's humiliation.  
  
Sandy, however, gave no other indication that he was bothered. "Well," he said, "I'm payin' my own way through law school, so I try to save money whenever I can. I'm not sure that's really a Jewish thing."  
  
"Oh, come on, Sandy," Kirsten's father said. "Law school is certainly a Jewish thing. The best lawyers I know are all Jewish. Nice job, being a lawyer. Everything I earn, the lawyers get a cut. That's another thing I admire about your people: you seem to have an amazing aptitude for making money without doing any of the really hard work. Don't you agree?"  
  
Kirsten was pretty sure her father didn't have any problem with Jewish people. He played golf with Al Berger at least once a week, and he hadn't raised an eyebrow when Kirsten had briefly dated the Bergers' son Joel in 9th grade. This, Kirsten thought, was a test. And it was a test that Sandy could only fail. If he let the remark pass, he was weak. If he said something, he was rude. "Stop it, dad!" Kirsten said furiously, willing Sandy to be rude.  
  
Kirsten saw anger in Sandy's blue eyes, but his voice was steady. "I don't know Mr. Nichol," he said, taking in the pool and the beachfront view. "You seem to be doing pretty well for a goy."  
  
"I work damn hard for my money," her father exclaimed.  
  
"Yeah, well, unless you personally bang in every nail in those houses, maybe we should ask the guys who actually build the stuff whether they think you're the one doing the hard work." Kirsten thought Sandy was making an effort not to let Caleb rile him, but he raised his voice ever so slightly. "How much does a construction worker make a year? As much as you spent on your patio furniture, you think?"  
  
"What are we talking about?" Kirsten's mother asked, making her way through the enormous glass doors that led from the living room to the patio. Kirsten was relieved to see her. She was sure that would put an end to any discussion of "the Jews." If there was anyone in the world her father feared, it was her mother, and Susan Nichol would never tolerate that kind of rudeness.  
  
"I was just asking Sandy what his father does for a living," Caleb asked gruffly.  
  
"Were you?" Sandy replied. Caleb looked at him expectantly, so Sandy told him, "he was a cop." Kirsten thought she heard something artificially casual in his voice, like he was trying not to reveal a weakness. Maybe he was just struggling to keep his temper in check.  
  
"How admirable. What does he do now?" her father prodded.  
  
"He died when I was 12," Sandy said evenly. This was news to Kirsten. How could she have dated a guy for months and not know that his father was dead? Sandy wasn't one of those guys who seemed to bottle things up. He was always ranting about some article in The Nation that pissed him off, or how amazing the new Afrika Bambaataa single was, or how it was impossible to get a decent bagel in the Bay Area. It was easy to mistake Sandy for a guy who wore his feelings on his sleeve. But she now realized that there was a lot of stuff that he didn't talk about.  
  
"No doubt he was heroically killed in the line of duty," Caleb said harshly, and both Kirsten and her mother flinched. Sandy glared at him. "No," he said simply.  
  
"A heart attack? A bar fight? I have a right to know exactly what kind of family my daughter is getting involved with."  
  
"I'm not discussing this with you," Sandy said angrily.  
  
"That's enough, Cal," Kirsten's mother interjected, and Kirsten detected a hint of steel beneath her mild tone. She turned to Sandy. "Kirsten's father and I both lost parents young. That's a terrible thing for anyone to go through. I'm sorry." And she did what she always did: she smoothed things over, she made up for Caleb's bad manners, she announced they were going to bed and led her husband off to read him the riot act. Susan Nichol seemed to all the world the perfect helpmeet, but Kirsten knew that she kept Caleb in line. She had a feeling this was the last time her father would be around Sandy without her mother chaperoning.  
  
"I am so sorry about that," Kirsten told Sandy after her parents left.  
  
"Not your fault," he responded tersely, and she could tell he was still pissed off.  
  
"No," she sighed. "It sort of is. I should have known he'd do something like that. He's mad at me, but he doesn't want to admit it, so he's taking it out on you. He's just picking on you to get back at me."  
  
"That's reassuring," Sandy said sarcastically. "I'm sure tomorrow he'll come around, forgive you for having a mind of your own, offer me a job with his company, join B'nai Brith."  
  
"What's B'nai Brith?" she asked.  
  
"Not important. A Jewish thing."  
  
She sighed again. "I don't think he really has anything against Jewish people. He was just trying to get your goat."  
  
"Yeah, right." Sandy said. "He thinks we're stingy and we cheat people out of their money, but other than that, we're great. His real problem with me is my cheap shirts."  
  
"There's nothing wrong with your clothes, Sandy. He was just trying to make you feel bad. He grew up poor, too, and he knows what buttons to push."  
  
"I didn't grow up poor, Kirsten," Sandy said, his voice cold and low. "I grew up normal. I'm not the weird one here."  
  
"You know, I actually don't know anything about how you grew up, Sandy," she said, irritated at his implied insult. "You never talk about it. You never talk about your family."  
  
"Am I supposed to apologize for that?" he asked. "Because you didn't exactly tell me that your father was a millionaire. Or a bigot."  
  
Kirsten felt a perverse desire to defend her father, to explain to Sandy how much she'd hurt him to make him lash out like that. But she was sure it would be useless when Sandy was so angry at Caleb and, she realized when he spoke again, at her.  
  
"Are you dating me just to piss your father off?" he demanded.  
  
Kirsten felt stricken, and then she was furious. "If you really think I'm that kind of person," she hissed at him "you shouldn't be going out with me." But there was a tiny bit of truth to that accusation, because although Kirsten was not dating Sandy to rebel against her parents, that was part of the reason she'd brought him home. A big part. She was the most selfish, hateful girlfriend in the whole world, she thought, staring at the pool. When she looked back up at him, there were tears in her eyes.  
  
"I'm dating you because you're the smartest, funniest, hottest guy I've ever met. My father would hate anyone I was with right now, because I'm not letting him dictate everything about my life, and I'm not submitting my boyfriend for his approval. But I don't want to be with any guy. I want to be with you. And it has nothing to do with my dad."  
  
She saw his anger soften into something like resignation. "Ok," he said. "I'm beat. I'm going to bed, and tomorrow we'll figure out how to get through the next three days without me throttling your father."  
  
"Are you ever going to tell me about your family" she asked, "now that you've seen mine in all its glory?"  
  
"I don't know," he answered. "Not tonight." As he made his way quietly back into the house, Kirsten couldn't decide whether she felt more embarrassed about her father or guilty for putting Sandy through that or hurt that he'd never trusted her enough to tell her the really important things about his life. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Authors note:  
**   
I don't own anything. By that, I mean that I don't own any of the characters, but it's also true that I don't own much else, either. Kirsten's rescued-from-the-trash couch is inspired by an actual piece of furniture in my apartment. If Josh Schwartz or Fox really want the proceeds of my dumpster-diving, I guess they could sue me, but it'll save us all a lot of hassle if they don't.  
  
  
**Chapter 5:  
  
** Sandy couldn't quite wrap his head around the idea of a guest room with its own attached bathroom: he could swear there were more bathrooms in this house than in his entire building in the Bronx. He had grown up fighting his whole family for shower time; here, each of the Nichols could have had two baths of their own, and there'd still be a few to spare for the hired help. It was obscene; everything about Kirsten's parents' house was a bit obscene. But he was grateful to be able to clean up without worrying about bumping into his hosts. He'd have to face them again tomorrow, but at least there would be no opportunity to see anyone tonight. He peeled his clothes off and stepped into the shower, flinching but relieved as scalding water hit his skin. He wasn't sure whether he felt so dirty because of the long car ride or his encounter with Kirsten's father. He wasn't sure this was the kind of dirt that could be washed off with hot water and soap. But it was better than nothing.  
  
Fucking idiot, he told himself savagely. What did I think I was doing here? I was going to take her home to her dad and they'd make up and we'd all live happily ever after? Because he was really a great guy, and she'd refused to talk to him for a year and a half for no good reason? Kirsten's not a moron, and she doesn't hold grudges. I should have known there was something really wrong with him. Where do I get off trying to rescue everyone else from their problems? I don't have my hands full enough with my own?  
  
Sandy wasn't really afraid that he'd throttle Caleb Nichol. He could have: Kirsten's father wasn't that old and he looked like he was in good shape, but if Sandy's childhood had taught him anything, it was how to fight. Where he grew up, little boys proved their manhood with their fists, and he'd had more to prove than most: a white kid in an increasingly black and Puerto Rican neighborhood; a cop's son in a place where plenty of people weren't much inclined to like or trust the police. Holding his own was how he showed he belonged: there were no hard feelings, and the next day they'd all be back to playing stickball in the park. But if he'd learned to fight as a kid, he'd learned to check his temper as a teenager, when fists gave way to knives and guns and the kind of fights that Sandy couldn't afford to lose or to win. He'd figured that out the hard way, and he'd learned to swallow his pride and walk away. He could still yell with the best of them, but he hadn't thrown a punch since he was 17, and he wasn't planning to start now. He had far too much to lose. Someone might get hurt this weekend, but it would be the kind of damage that's done with words, not with blows. At least, he sincerely hoped so.  
  
So, he thought, my girlfriend's parents hate me. Kirsten's mother had been scrupulously polite, but Sandy didn't think anyone that image-obsessed could approve of him. He clashed with pretty much everything about Newport Beach, he thought ruefully. His accent was wrong; his clothes were wrong; he was pretty sure he'd let on how intimidated he was by all the obvious wealth; he wasn't convinced that he could even follow a conversation about real estate or golf or how hard it was to get good help these days or whatever it was people here talked about. He wondered what manicured, coiffed Mrs. Nichol would make of his own mother, with her too-loud voice and too-red lipstick and frizzy dyed hair that refused to stay in place after a long day bending over steam plates at the hospital cafeteria where she worked. He pushed that thought aside. There was nothing wrong with his family. He had nothing to be ashamed of.   
  
Except that it wasn't that simple. Before he'd arrived in Berkeley, it had never occurred to him that people might feel sorry for him. Things that seemed normal in New York, like not knowing how to drive, took on a totally different cast once he left town. His new friends had staged an immediate intervention, dragging him out at 7 on a Saturday morning so he could practice driving a stick shift around a parking lot and get his license. He'd been glad to learn, but he wasn't pleased with the pitying look on their faces when they discussed the fact that a guy in his 20s might not know how to drive. He'd tried to explain that no one in New York had a car, and they claimed that made sense, but he was pretty sure they were just humoring him.  
  
And then there'd been the jerk he'd been introduced to at a party because they were both from the Bronx. The guy's name was Chris Levy, which should have been some sort of heads up: what kind of Jew names their kid Christopher? Anyway, Chris Levy was from Riverdale, the rich neighborhood just north of Manhattan that might as well have been in the suburbs, and he'd immediately assumed that Sandy was, too. He'd asked if he was the Sandy Cohen who'd been a couple of years behind him at Fieldston, which Sandy later found out was one of the toniest prep schools in the city. Sandy hadn't thought anything of it: he'd told the guy that he was from Hunts Point and had graduated from South Bronx High. He hadn't expected Chris Levy's response: the guy looked surprised and a little intimidated and started asking questions that would have made sense if Sandy had said he'd grown up in Belfast or Beirut or the ninth circle of Hell. No, Sandy patiently told him, he'd never been shot. Yes, he knew people who had been. Yes, there was a lot of arson in the South Bronx: landlords mostly, hoping to get rid of buildings that weren't profitable anymore. No, he wasn't in a gang. Yes, there were still some white people left in Hunts Point. A few. Sandy's family.   
  
The thing was, Sandy had always been a little proud that his family had stuck it out in Hunts Point when all the other Jewish people left. It had been a choice, at first. This is a nice neighborhood, his father had said. There's no law that says you have to live near people who look like you. Later, after his dad died, it had come down to necessity: his mother couldn't afford to give up the rent-controlled apartment, even when the neighborhood really did fall apart. But even then, Sandy had taken pleasure in his ability to negotiate different worlds; he liked that he was equally at home at street-corner breakdancing battles and at CBGBs. He thought it was cool that his friends at City College had spanned the city's whole physical and cultural geography. He thought of himself as worldly and intrepid. Chris Levy just thought of him as an exotic specimen: a white guy who'd grown up in the ghetto.   
  
So while Sandy knew there was nothing to be ashamed of about his family, he also knew that they were not exactly the Cleavers and that he'd have to think about how to explain it all to Kirsten so she'd get the right idea. She said she wanted to know, and he wanted to be honest with her. But he couldn't stand the idea of her pitying him. Not that there was anything to pity him about.   
  
He dried himself off with one of the Nichols' impossibly soft towels and climbed into bed, luxuriating in the impossibly soft sheets. They probably cost a fortune, like everything in this house, but Sandy thought soft sheets were worth it. When he was a lawyer, he would definitely shell out the money for sheets like this. They were a lot nicer than the ones at Kirsten's apartment, and nicer still than his sheets, which he'd snagged from Rudi's place and which had probably come from the store where Rudi had worked as a stock clerk. They sure as hell didn't deal in high thread count there.  
  
Rudi, Sandy thought, was someone he could tell Kirsten about. He was important but mostly safe, if Sandy told it in the right way. He was Sandy's great uncle, the much-older brother of Sandy's mother's mother. Sandy's grandmother had come to America with her parents when she was just a little kid, but Rudi had had a life: a job, a new wife, a baby on the way. So he'd stayed behind. And when he finally did show up in the Bronx, Sandy's mother had been embarrassed by his old-world accent, his stiff demeanor, the numbers tattooed on his wrist. Before she died, Sandy's grandmother had trouble dealing with him, too, although she always invited him to family events. Later, Sandy would learn that there were theories to describe all of this: survivor's guilt and that kind of thing. But when he was a kid, he'd had no idea why the only grown-up with whom Rudi really hit it off was his father.   
  
They seemed like unlikely friends. It wasn't just the age difference, or even the vast chasm of life experience that separated Rudi from almost everyone else in Hunts Point. Sandy's dad was gregarious, instantly buddies with everyone he met, while Rudi was almost pathologically reserved. Sandy's father was a bit too fond of liquor and the track; as far as Sandy could ever tell, Rudi's only vice was the cream-laden pastry he ate every day at 3 PM. Sandy's father's sense of humor tended towards funny stories, jokes with punch-lines, the kind of thing that could diffuse any tense situation or entertain an entire room. Rudi liked understated irony, sly mocking; it wasn't until he was ten or eleven that Sandy even realized that his great-uncle had a sense of humor. He supposed part of their bond was politics. Not the formal kind: it was hard to imagine either of them stumping for a candidate or attending a rally. But they quietly agreed that the war in Vietnam was a bad thing, that there were civil rights issues in the North, too, and that the student protestors, although they might be spoiled college kids, were sort of onto something. They both rolled their eyes when people started ranting about how the Puerto Ricans were ruining the neighborhood. Neither of them would cross a picket line. That kind of thing.   
  
When Sandy was little, Rudi would come around every Saturday to talk to Sandy's father. Sandy's dad would pour himself a beer, make Rudi some coffee, and they'd sit in the kitchen discussing the news. Sandy liked to sit in on these sessions, quietly at first, later gathering up the courage to offer an opinion or two. His dad and Rudi treated him like a grown-up: heard him out, agreed with some of what he said, pointed out what they thought were the logical flaws in the rest. Sandy tried to hold his ground, imitating his dad and Rudi's style: passionate but not angry; confident, but not so much so that it got in the way of hearing the other person's point of view. He must have done a pretty good job, because once Rudi turned to his dad, smiled, and said, this one should be a lawyer, no?  
  
And then Sandy's father lost his job, and two weeks later he was dead, hit by a subway train in what was ruled an accident but neighborhood gossip claimed was not accidental at all. Sandy had never got the full story: he was too young to be told, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. There was something about a gambling debt, and a bribe taken to pay it off, and possible jail time. Sandy chose to remember his dad as a charming, decent man who was liked by everyone, not as a compulsive gambler who would abandon his family when the going got tough. Other people were less charitable, though. In the weeks after his father's death, a lot of people avoided Sandy and his sisters, not sure what to say. But Rudi showed up the next Saturday as usual, brandishing tickets to a Yankees game.  
  
That initial outing was a disaster: Rudi didn't even understand baseball, and he was such a poor substitute for Sandy's father that it made them both indescribably sad. Sandy would go to lots more baseball games, but always with friends his own age. After that, though, they hit their stride, sticking to things that Sandy had never done with his dad. Rudi would take Sandy to the Cloisters or the Met or Shakespeare in the Park: cultural attractions that were an easy subway ride from the Bronx but felt like a million miles away. Sandy wasn't sure where Rudi got the money for some of it. He didn't have much to spare. Some of the best stuff was free, though. They both loved the New York Public Library, with the lions in front and, according to Rudi, every book ever published inside. Sandy loved that idea, even after he realized it wasn't really true. You couldn't check out books from the library with the lions, but Rudi showed him where the lending library was, helped him get a card, and wasn't offended when every week for two years Sandy chose spy novels and mysteries over the classics that he recommended.  
  
It was a good thing that Rudi was around in the years following Sandy's father's death, because everyone else in his family seemed to have too much on their minds to think much about him. His mother was preoccupied with making ends meet, working a full shift in the cafeteria before heading off to her after-hours office-cleaning job. He could go for days barely seeing her: she left for her first job just after he got up, and she was usually asleep by the time he got back from the park where he played baseball and hung out with his friends every evening. His sisters weren't any better: Karen was preoccupied with the high school sweetheart she'd marry two weeks after graduation, and Steph was increasingly preoccupied with finding her next fix, or finding ways to pay for it. That, he thought, was definitely one of the things he'd edit out of the version he told Kirsten.  
  
Sandy didn't really miss the attention, or at least he wasn't conscious of missing it. There was lots to do in his neighborhood, and nobody to stop him from doing any of it. Not that it was all illegal or dangerous, and Sandy definitely had limits. He wasn't planning to end up a junkie like Stephanie, or worse. He had two close friends, Ray and Carlos, and they were a lot like him: not looking for trouble, more interested in music and sports and girls and martial-arts flicks than gangs or turf battles, but not above skipping school or smoking up when the opportunity presented itself.  
  
Skipping school was the thing that finally got his mother to pay some attention to him. It seemed stupid to him at the time, and it still seemed a little stupid years later. On the rare occasions when Steph came home, they had to hide anything that could possibly be pawned, and he didn't want to think about what she was doing for money when she wasn't stealing her family's belongings. If there was someone in the Cohen family his mom should be worrying about, it sure as hell wasn't him. And she didn't even seem that mad that Sandy had been blowing off school. She seemed more angry that she'd had to confront the truant officer, who had apparently found her on the fifth try and implied that any parent who was home that rarely couldn't be adequately supervising her child's school attendance. She basically came right out and called me a bad mother, his mom yelled at him. As hard as I work to put food on the table for you. Do you have any idea how mortifying that is? Sandy couldn't see why it was any more mortifying than having the entire building hear this argument through their apartment's paper-thin walls, but he kept his mouth shut and retreated sullenly into his room. He didn't care about school: it was a holding pen, a place where they put kids all day so they couldn't go out and cause trouble. Glorified babysitting, and at fifteen he was plenty old enough to take care of himself. But he felt terrible about inflicting on his mother some pompous civil servant who had never tried to pay the rent on minimum wage.  
  
His mom clearly felt worse, because she'd promptly summoned Rudi and washed her hands of her son. That truant lady was right, she said, loud enough so that Sandy could hear it through his closed door, which was loud enough so that it would be the talk of the block tomorrow. I can't supervise him. He's out of control: he skips school, he comes and goes as he pleases, for all I know he's shooting up just like his sister. You're the only person he respects. You take him. Sandy thought of himself as nearly grown and pretty tough, but he fought back tears when Rudi knocked on his door to tell him to pack his stuff.  
  
Living with his uncle wasn't easy. For one thing, the old man was a mess: he was prone to depression and paranoia, hording food and morbidly planning for emergencies that Sandy knew would never come. There was all sorts of important stuff you couldn't talk about with him: questions you couldn't ask, gaps in his history that he would never allow you to explore. Sandy had always known that; he'd always realized that Rudi had been shaped by trauma and grief that he couldn't begin to discuss. But it was hard to deal with it every day, hard to think so much about saying the right thing or not saying the wrong one.   
  
And there were more mundane issues, too. Rudi's apartment was a one bedroom, and he insisted on sleeping on the sofa so that Sandy could take the room and have a place to study. You don't have to study to do ok at my school, Sandy had protested. You just have to shut up and not get into fights or make trouble. I'm not taking your bed. But Rudi insisted. He had rules: Sandy would go to school every day, he'd stay in school until he graduated or moved out, and he'd get a part-time job to pay his expenses. He would do his homework. It wasn't Rudi's business what he smoked, but Sandy wouldn't bring home anything illegal. He would be home by the time Rudi went to sleep, because he'd wake the old man up creeping through the living room into his bedroom. Sandy chafed at all of this, but he complied, partly because he was afraid of where he'd be sent if his uncle kicked him out and partly because he suddenly realized how old Rudi was and how hard it must be for him to live alone. Sandy didn't mind schlepping groceries up three flights of stairs, but it couldn't be easy for a man who was pushing 80. He cared about his great uncle, but he also kind of liked feeling useful and needed. He figured he could stick it out. They eventually settled into a routine.  
  
November of Sandy's senior year, two important things happened. The first was a bad thing: a street-corner argument that turned into a fight, a fight that turned into an all-out brawl with guys you really didn't want to mess around with, a terrifying night in a holding cell before Sandy learned he wasn't going to be charged with anything and then another terrifying three days waiting to hear for sure that his friend Ray was going to pull through.   
  
When it was all over, Sandy tried to act like it was no big deal, but Rudi was having none of it.   
  
I'm ok, Sandy said.   
  
I don't think you are, Rudi told him. But why don't we pretend for a second that the universe doesn't revolve around you. My whole life, I have lost all of the people I have loved the most. Except you. I don't know why you care so little about your future. It makes no sense to me. But you are not the only person in the world, and you are not the only one who gets hurt when you hurt yourself. I shouldn't have to tell this to you, of all people. Maybe you want to end up dead or in jail, but you have no right to do that to me.  
  
Sandy couldn't think of a response to that; he was taken aback both by what he took to be Rudi's oblique acknowledgment of the dead wife and children he never talked about and by his admission that he loved Sandy. Love wasn't something Sandy thought about a whole lot.   
  
he said. No more fighting. I promise.   
  
You mean that? Rudi asked.  
  
Sandy replied. Dead or in jail don't sound so good to me, either.   
  
And then Rudi said the second important thing. Since we're talking about your future have you ever thought about going to college?  
  
I'm not the college type, Rudi, Sandy laughed. I couldn't get in. And besides, I can barely wait to get out of high school.  
  
I think you could get in, Rudi said. City College has open admission: all you need is a B average. You don't have that?  
  
Yeah, I probably do, Sandy admitted. You pretty much get that automatically if you can walk upright and write your name. That wasn't strictly true, but Sandy wasn't going to admit that he did crack the occasional book.  
  
Then you like your job so much that you want to do it for the rest of your life?  
  
Sandy snorted at that. He did kind of like his job, actually. Rudi had hooked him up with a gig in receiving at the store where the old man worked, and he liked the money and the camaraderie with the other guys. But it was only part time, and he didn't really see himself unpacking boxes eight hours a day for the next fifty years. He got pretty bored when he went to full time over the summer.  
  
You're afraid you'll find out you're not as smart as you think you are? Rudi pressed.  
  
I don't think I'm smart, Sandy protested.  
  
You don't know if you're smart, Rudi told him. You always tell me they don't care at your school, as long as you don't make trouble. Maybe you should go somewhere where they care and find out.  
  
Sandy wasn't convinced, but he really had no idea what he was going to do after graduation. Carlos was pretty certain he was going to join the Air Force, and if there was one thing Sandy knew for sure, it was that he wasn't cut out for the military. Ray's mom had announced that as soon as her son got out of the hospital he was going to live with her sister in Florida where, she said, glaring at Sandy, there were fewer lunatics. Sandy had to admit that his post-graduation prospects looked pretty grim: a boring job, no good friends, the same dull crap, only now a little more dull. College at least would mean new people. He decided he'd give it a semester and see how it went. Rudi said they could keep their living arrangement, and he refused Sandy's offer to help out with the rent.   
  
College turned out to be a revelation. Sandy had no idea school could be like that: kids who didn't laugh when you used big words, classes where they assigned books you might actually want to read, teachers who seemed _pleased_ when you argued with them, who were impressed by precisely the kind of comment that got you labeled a wise-ass at South Bronx. Not that it was easy. Sandy had never had to work very hard at anything, and he realized he had no idea how to study. All his classmates seemed to have gone to places like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, schools that were actually supposed to prepare you for college, and they seemed unfazed by assignments with which he struggled. At first, he worked like a dog for Cs. But by second semester, he was getting Bs and As, and the next year, much to his amazement, he developed a reputation for being a brain. He'd always been the kid with an opinion about everything and an argument to back it up, but that had never seemed to him to have anything to do with school. Nobody at school cared what you thought about things. Here, if you could argue your opinions well, people thought you were smart. He was specially invited to study sessions; classmates asked him to read over and critique their papers. He did things he'd never even contemplated: he stayed after class to finish discussions; he joined clubs; he met with professors just to talk about stuff he didn't understand. He felt like he'd finally located his people: a secret tribe of smart-aleck city kids who'd spent their childhoods in the public library. He'd never had trouble getting along with people, but it was the first time in his life when he didn't feel even a little bit like a freak.   
  
Rudi died the summer before Sandy's senior year at CCNY. It was mercifully quick: Sandy was unloading boxes in the back of the store when someone came to tell him his uncle had collapsed. The paramedics let Sandy ride in the ambulance, and he could tell Rudi was gone before they even arrived at the hospital. Sandy wasn't sure whether he should perform the Jewish mourning rituals. Rudi wasn't at all religious: the only time Sandy had seen him in _shul_ was for Sandy's bar mitzvah, and that was only to show support for a recently-bereaved little kid. They'd never talked about it, but Sandy assumed Rudi thought religion was a bunch of empty rites, meaningless tasks performed for a diety who didn't even exist. Sandy didn't really disagree, but he felt like he needed a ritual, something to mark the transition before he returned to an apartment now empty of Rudi's presence. So he went though the motions of sitting _shiva_, opening the apartment to mourners, even though there weren't that many people left to come by. The rabbi came and offered awkward platitudes, ignoring the obvious fact that there was a reason he'd never laid eyes on Rudi when he was alive. Karen and Jorge had moved to Boston and could only call, but Steph came, newly sober but even more awkward than the rabbi. Sandy made conversation and tried really hard to avoid glancing over at his wallet. Sandy's mom brought a ham and cheese casserole, which Sandy discreetly hid until the rabbi was gone. Rudi would have like that, he thought. It made him smile for the first time in days.   
  
Sandy talked to his mom on occasion. Things were a little tense between them, but they both made an effort. She'd even taken off work last year to come see him get an award for the best undergrad sociology paper. He'd been embarrassed by the attention, but also secretly pleased she'd shown up. But they didn't usually talk about serious things, so Sandy was surprised when his mom smiled sadly at him and said, you're a bit like him, you know. I mean, you're not at all like him, but you're like I think he would have been if it hadn't been for the Nazis and his family and everything. A bit like the man he should have been.  
  
Sandy wasn't sure that was true, but he liked to hear it anyway. Thanks, mom, he said. That's the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a while.  
  
You're a lot like your father, too, she said, if he'd been a much stronger man. Sandy didn't think it was possible to be like both Rudi and his father: he didn't think he'd ever met two people who were more different. But he took this as his mother's way of telling him she was proud of him, so he let it pass. And the thing was, he didn't really want to be like either of them, but he did want to be the person they'd have wanted him to be. That was something worth striving for.  
  
Sandy couldn't see any point in sitting _shiva_ for the full week. He was mostly doing it for his own benefit, and after the first two days everyone who was going to come had already been by. So the third day he took the towel off of the bathroom mirror, took a shower, and made his way to City College, where he found the right office to ask what you had to do to apply to law school, how you could pay for it, and what were the five best public ones in the country.   
  
Which is how Sandy came to be at Berkeley, and to meet an amazing girl at a job fair, and to be spending the night in her parents' over-the-top monument to conspicuous consumption. Tomorrow, he thought, he'd find a way to explain it all to Kirsten. Tonight he was going to drift off to sleep as if he was completely at home in a world of en-suite bathrooms, live-in maids and Egyptian cotton sheets.   



End file.
